


part of the knife you hold

by orphan_account



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 03:03:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4903066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Hakuryuu goes off to college, Judal has something he's been meaning to tell him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	part of the knife you hold

When it is dark and the silence is an aching, empty thing yearning to be filled, Hakuryuu turns his head toward the ceiling and Judal admires the way the light from the glow-in-the-dark stars gets caught in in his wet, wide eyes. Evenings keep trickling through their fingers like this; the scent of autumn starts to mix with sweet grass and whisper its way through the warm air.

_Do you really have to go?_

Judal’s bad habit, Hakuryuu tells him often, is asking questions to which he already has the answer. So he doesn’t ask again, only holds on to it, stuck to the roof of his mouth, shivering there unsaid. He doesn’t want to hear Hakuryuu clear his throat and tell him, _Yeah, you know it’s really important to me._ He’s already memorized those words, and the way Hakuryuu’s lips curl down for a moment after he says them, and the way his chest rises and falls with the tide of his breath when he’s staring at a wall and trying not to cry.

Tonight, they turned the calendar to September, and Judal rubbed a thumb over the red circle marking the date of Hakuryuu’s departure. Now that he can feel the grooves in the paper, the weight of the days they have left comes crashing down on him with the sudden ferocity of a tidal wave. No longer does he have the luxury of pushing that feeling—that shadow of a feeling to the edges of his consciousness so that it doesn’t cast itself over his thoughts when he’s sitting next to Hakuryuu in the dark. It has gnawed at him for too long already, poking and prodding at the image of himself that he so carefully constructed.

_You are not the razorblade of a man that you want people to think you are_ , it’s been whispering; _you are just a knife; sharp, and cold, but your grip is smooth to the hand worthy of wielding it, and you lie in a bed of velvet._

Veiled in the settling gloam, Hakuryuu turns to look at him, and, oh, Judal’s stomach contracts under the force of that gaze. Hakuryuu looks tired and thin, but Judal has seen the hurricane inside of him, has acknowledged that, inside, they are the same beast. And perhaps that is the reason behind the feeling that he keeps at arm’s length. And perhaps it doesn’t matter what the reason is because the feeling exists nonetheless, barring reason and barring sense and all those other sticky things Judal tries to avoid.

Hakuryuu is intimate with patience but that is where they differ; now that Judal can name that which he feels, he knows it will soon claw its way tooth and nail out of his throat and lay itself bare in the open. If Hakuryuu keeps his mouth a prison, Judal’s is a gate with rusted hinges, and he won’t stay silent long.

But now it is Hakuryuu who dispels the quiet with a sigh. “I have a week before I have to leave,” he reminds Judal. “I don’t really have time for this.”

“Time for _what_?” Judal asks, the question formed and out before he can think anything of it.

The ghost of a smile haunts Hakuryuu’s lips. “Tell me you’re not _that_ dense.”  

“Asshole,” Judal laughs, and the way it bubbles out of him is almost nervous. “Are you trying to kick me out or something? I hate to break it to ya, but it’s almost midnight and I am _not_ walking home in the dark.”

Judal picks at the skin by one of his nails until he can feel the familiar wet warmth of blood sticking to his fingers. The flood of anxiety rises in his ribcage because Hakuryuu hasn’t looked away yet; his eyes stay fixed on Judal’s face, staring at him with questions in their depths.

“I’m patient, Judal. I waited all summer.”

_For what,_ Judal wants to say, but Hakuryuu will scold him for asking a question to which he already has an answer. For once he has nothing else to say, so he lets the silence speak for him.

After the pause, Hakuryuu continues, “Maybe I read this the wrong way. I don’t really think so, though. I don’t think you think so either.”

_So this is how it happens,_ Judal thinks. The hazy world spins around him in a sequence of dim blurs. Hakuryuu’s good hand at the back of his neck, tracing shivers down his spine. His forehead pressed to Judal’s own, their faces close enough for kissing. Surely it’s happening too fast to be anything but a dream. Judal shuts his eyes.

“Wait, are you gonna kiss me?” he whispers, and he feels the way his breath hits Hakuryuu’s skin.

“Why do you always do that,” Hakuryuu whispers back. His words pour out soft and small over the tip of Judal’s nose. “You always ask questions even when you already know what the answer is.”

**Author's Note:**

> TECHNICALLY this is standalone but it might be part of a series later on! actually you know what that's probably almost definitely a lie but a girl can dream??? it's 2:30 am and this is mostly pretentious and entirely un-proofread and probably belongs on tumblr more than here but WHATEVER I GUESS. title comes from the google search term i used when i was trying to figure out what that particular part of a knife is called and it ended up sounding ~deep~ (it's not but i like it anyway)


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